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HUMANUM CAPAX DIVINI 



We are children of God, and if children 
then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs 
with Christ. 



ON BEING DIVINE 



ON BEING DIVINE 

A BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS 



BY 

MARION LeROY BURTON 

PRESIDENT OF SMITH COLLEGE 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO 






Copyright 1916 
By FRANK M. SHELDON 



ii ■ 



NOV 27 1916 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 



CO 



©CI.A446614 



TO 
THE CLASS OF 1916 
AT SMITH COLLEGE 



r 






■'S^ 



ON BEING DIVINE 






/ have said, Ye are gods; and all of you 
are children of the Most High. 

Psalm 82: 6 



ON BEING DIVINE 

To speak upon the subject of being 
divine may seem at first thought bold 
and presumptuous, if not irreverent. 
Certainly the idea that man is divine is 
quite contradictory to many of our 
old theories of human nature and is 
scarcely sustained by the present rela- 
tions existing between the peoples of 
Europe. 

Even so the essential truth of our 
theme is amply attested by Scripture 
and is a central tenet in the teachings 
of Jesus Christ. He taught us to say 
"our Father." It is not a metaphysical 
assumption which denies our limita- 
tions but the confident assertion of our 
rich possibilities as sons of God. 
"Humanum cap ax divini." In reality 
it is the fearless proclamation of the 
modern interpretation of Jesus' esti- 
mate of man. 

What are the marks of a child of 
God? Reverently we may ask, What 
is it to be divine? What does it in- 
volve to accept in actual living Jesus' 
appraisal of a human being? 






^SS' ; 












BE YOURSELF 

First of all, it involves being your- 
self and insisting upon living your own 
life. Obviously to be yourself means 
to be your best self. As a child of God 
you have purposes and aspirations. 
You have a world of values dependent 
upon the things of the spirit. Being 
divine means being yourself at your 
best, for all that is finest in you is of 
God. 

The world, however, seems engaged 
in a conspiracy to crush the individual. 
Democracy would justify the tyranny 
of the majority. Our age in its splen- 
did emphasis upon social obligations 
appears to argue against individuality. 
A due regard for the past and a worthy 
reverence for our elders counsels con- 
servatism, which is often simply being 
what others have been. Public opinion, 
established custom, even fashion, de- 
mand strict conformity to conven- 
tionalities. A practical age seems to 
confer its chief blessings upon the per- 



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ON BEING DIVINE 5 

son who can compromise his ideals, 
that is to say, who can fail to be him- 
self. The subtle lure of our complex 
civilization tends to rob us of strong 
and virile personalities. The present 
war disregards utterly the worth of 
each man. Without failing to recog- 
nize the essential truths in all these 
mighty forces we must realize keenly 
that they are making an unwarranted 
demand when personal integrity and 
independence are sacrificed. 

It is of value to observe that Jesus 
dared to be himself. It is one of the 
clear evidences of his divinity. The 
essential fact at the heart of the tempta- 
tion of Jesus is that he insisted upon 
living his own life. The same prin- 
ciple finds constant expression in his 
later ministry. He not only refused to 
be made king but "when the days were 
well nigh come that he should be re- 
ceived up, he steadfastly set his face to 
go up to Jerusalem." He was forced 
to pay a terrible cost for clinging so 
tenaciously to his inner purpose. It 
brought misunderstanding, opposition, 
suffering and death. But Jesus was 
helping us to see what it is to be divine. 



6 ON BEING DIVINE 

Being yourself, then, assumes a new 
significance. Naturally it does not 
mean being undemocratic or unsocial. 
Surely it does not require one to be un- 
reasonable, or dogmatic, or stubborn, 
or blind to any of the worthy relation- 
ships of life. But it does call for inde- 
pendence, clear vision, inner certainty, 
loyalty to ideals and a complete identi- 
fication of yourself with your prin- 
ciples. It involves for us, as it did for 
Jesus, fearful struggles and bitter ex- 
periences. It requires every person to 
guard his own life as a holy and 
inviolable gift of God. There come 
crises in every life when no other per- 
son, neither employer nor associate, 
nor friend nor lover, nor brother nor 
sister, nor father nor mother, nor hus- 
band nor wife, nor any agency nor 
power, can venture to decide for you 
or to presume upon you. In such an 
hour to be divine compels you instinc- 
tively to arise and say, "I must be 
myself." 

" This above all, — to thine own self be true; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 



II 

BE AN HEIR OF GOD 

There are fatal dangers in trying to 
be yourself even at your best. It gives 
a false emphasis to life. Conceit and 
narrowness are almost inevitable by- 
products. Self is not primary. A self- 
centered world is not a real world. 
Standards lack objectivity, and life is 
not social. One is deprived of the 
strength and inspiration found alone in 
the great objective, independent order 
of the world. 

Being divine is being a child of God. 
The apostle Paul formulated this truth 
when he wrote to the Romans that "we 
are children of God; and if children 
then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs 
with Christ." To be an heir of God 
shifts the emphasis instantly from your- 
self to God. It means that we are liv- 
ing in filial relationship with the 
Father, that we are his kindred, his 
offspring, and inherit by nature his 
character and purposes. It implies 
that we are his representatives among 



- 



8 ON BEING DIVINE 

men, and that his cause is our cause. 
At heart, it requires of us as worthy 
children that we make God's will our 
will, that we lose ourselves in the 
consciousness of being God's ambas- 
sadors. 

How illuminating it is to test this 
principle by the life of Christ. Above 
everything else he conceived himself 
to be his Father's representative. This 
is the unique impression which he 
made upon everyone. His supreme 
aim was to do the Father's will. 
"Nevertheless not as I will but as thou 
wilt" was the prayer which summa- 
rized his life. He even asserts his one- 
ness with God and declares without 
hesitation that "all things have been 
delivered" unto him of his Father. 
His constant purpose was to express 
God. For this reason he attacked sin, 
preached the Kingdom and was willing 
to die for his cause. All that he taught, 
or did, or was, came from his Father. 
He dared to be himself just because 
he was a child of God. 

We, too, can live our own lives only 
as we claim our heritage as joint-heirs 
with Christ. Being an heir of God 






V€S33* 



will solve for us many perplexing 
questions. It will define our attitude 
to ourselves. From one point of view 
it will overwhelm us with a profound 
sense of humility. It will not be mere 
self-distrust, or self-depreciation, or 
lack of confidence in our abilities and 
powers. It will be rather the strong 
conviction that self is of value only as 
it expresses God. From another point 
of view it will endow us with an 
astounding consciousness of authority 
and innate worth. This sense of power 
will not be synonymous with self-suf- 
ficiency, or conceit, or pride of talent, 
or narrow-minded dogmatism. It will 
be the authority of one who is repre- 
senting God. Jesus Christ impressed 
the world both with his humility and 
with his power. Of him they said that 
he taught them as one having authority. 
The secret of his life lay in his certainty 
of the Father, and his matchless devo- 
tion to the Father's will. By the same 
method and by that alone can we be 
children of the Most High. 

This truth has been formulated very 
clearly by Mr. Ruskin. In speaking of 
such men as Albert Durer and Sir 






10 ON BEING DIVINE 



Isaac Newton he said : "They have a 
curious undersense of powerlessness, 
feeling that the power is not in them, 
but through them, that they could not 
do or be anything else than God made 
them, and they see something divine 
and God-made in every other man they 
meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, in- 
credibly merciful." In reality, God 
provides the dynamic for being our- 
selves. Paradoxical as it may sound, 
we can only be ourselves by being heirs 
of God. 



Ill 

BE A CREATOR 

True purpose must result in worthy 
action. Emerson said, "All men stand 
in need of expression. In love, in art, 
in politics, in labor, in games, we study 
to utter our secret." If we are heirs of 
God we must be at work. Christ 
taught this truth most emphatically in 
the great Mountain Sermon. "Not 
everyone that saith unto me, Lord, 
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
heaven, but he that doeth the will of 
my Father who is in heaven. By their 
fruits ye shall know them. Every good 
tree bringeth forth good fruit." Even 
as a boy Jesus exemplified this truth. 
To his anxious parents who found him 
in the temple he said: "How is it that 
ye sought me. Know ye not that I 
must be about my Father's business?" 
At one time he told his disciples that 
his very sustenance was to do the will 
of him that sent him and to accomplish 
his work. 

Moreover Christ was an original, 



12 ON BEING DIVINE 

creative thinker and worker. His 
uniqueness consists not only in his dar- 
ing to be himself, not in his conscious 
union with God, but also in his being 
deliberately and intentionally an in- 
novator. He came not to destroy but 
to fulfill. Specific illustrations of this 
policy abound in the life of Christ. 
He violated social standards. He was 
a friend of publicans and sinners. He 
acted repeatedly on principles which 
defied the established law. He healed 
on the Sabbath day and disregarded 
their distinctions of ceremonial clean- 
ness and uncleanness. He did not hesi- 
tate to attack the religious aristocracy 
of his day nor to uproot the legalized 
forms of graft which had grown up 
in the temple. Jesus did not do these 
things just to be an innovator. He did 
them because the realities of life de- 
manded them. He was independent of 
the past. Truth for him knew no time 
distinctions. He was capable of think- 
ing in new terms and of devising new 
methods of work. He was essentially 
a creator. 

The world today is in need of cre- 
ators, who, daring to be true to their 



ON BEING DIVINE 13 

best and aiming to be God's agents, are 
forced by some inner compulsion to 
grapple with our evils and to discover 
the remedies which will correct them. 
Every problem is a call for a creator. 
Social injustice, special privileges, 
political evils, industrial wrongs, edu- 
cational inefficiency, international mis- 
understandings are the voice of God 
pleading with his heirs to be creative, 
constructive workers in his world. 

Life itself demands creators-. It is 
not static. Nothing abides. Change 
alone is permanent. Every hour brings 
new issues. In every realm of human 
activity there exists the demand for the 
inventive, discovering spirit of the sons 
of God. 

Being divine, then, calls us to express 
our inner purposes by being creators, 
by co-operating with God in making 
his world and in establishing his King- 
dom. It gives us a great and worthy 
cause demanding all the creative en- 
ergy which we possess. It compels us 
to grow and to develop with a chang- 
ing, evolving world. To be divine 
means work, — hard, painstaking, se- 
vere, continuous toil. This is the cru- 



14 ON BEING DIVINE 

cial test to which life will put our 
divinity. It is the attribute of God 
himself. When the Jews persecuted 
Jesus because he healed a man on the 
Sabbath day, he simply announced to 
them: "My father worketh even until 
now and I work." Every heir of God 
must abound in the work of the Lord. 










IV 
BE A SAVIOR 

Being divine is being something 
more than any of the things we have 
been discussing. In a sense to be divine 
is to be infinite and eternal. It is a 
thing of the spirit, defying analysis and 
statement. Is it possible for us to catch 
even faintly this spirit which pervades 
the very idea of divinity? Perhaps by 
approaching it from several points of 
view and then by recognizing that all 
these elements combine to produce one 
great stupendous truth we shall come as 
near as possible to the realization of 
our aim. 

To be divine is to be possessed of a 
spirit which permeates all that one 
does or thinks or dreams. It must be 
the reality to which the Apostle Paul 
alluded when he spoke of "the glorious 
liberty of the children of God." It 
brings serenity in the midst of storm 
and trustfulness in the presence of 
uncertainty. It creates unconquerable 
hope when enemies assail and mighty 



16 ON BEING DIVINE 

forces of opposition are aroused. It is 
the certainty of ultimate triumph what- 
ever the present hour may hold of de- 
feat, or dismay, or even death. This 
characteristic of Jesus was never shown 
more dramatically than when, on the 
eve of his crucifixion as a base crim- 
inal, he sat down with his disciples and 
prophetically established a symbolic 
memorial of his death, in absolute as- 
surance of his coming victory. "Verily 
I say unto you, I shall no more drink 
of the fruit of the vine, until that day 
when I drink it new in the Kingdom 
of God." To be divine is to be mar- 
vellously, incredibly confident. 

" The year's at the spring, 
And day's at the morn; 
Morning's at seven; 
The hill-side's dew-pearled; 
The lark's on the wing; 
The snail's on the thorn; 
God's in His heaven — 
All's right with the world!" 

To be divine is to love. "I say unto 
you love your enemies and pray for 
them that persecute you that ye may be 
sons of your Father who is in heaven; 
for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil 



ON BEING DIVINE 17 

and the good and sendeth rain on the 
just and the unjust." It is a love which 
recognizes no barriers of color, creed 
or nationality. It knows that all men 
are children of the Father, that all 
mankind is divine. Above all it is a 
forgiving love. The prodigal was "no 
more worthy to be called a son," but 
nothing could rob him of his potential 
sonship. When he arose and went to 
his father, he was welcomed. Prob- 
ably Jesus taught no newer or stranger 
truth than a love which included un- 
limited forgiveness. To be divine is to 
know that love never faileth. 

But love in a world of sin means in- 
evitably that the lover must suffer. In 
proportion as love is deep and genuine, 
suffering will be bitter and intense. 
This is the meaning of the cross of 
Christ. This is the very center of our 
thought of God. He carries in his 
heart an eternal cross of woe, because 
his children have wandered into a far 
country. To be divine is to suffer. 
The reality of our divine life may be 
measured by our suffering both for our 
own sin, and, more particularly, for 
that of society. We are "heirs of God 






30 

i I 



18 ON BEING DIVINE 

and joint heirs with Christ; if so be 
that we suffer with him." 

At heart to be divine is to be a savior. 
Confidence in the ultimate victory of 
good, love for all mankind, suffering 
in the presence of evil are the elements 
of saviorhood. God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto himself. 
His great Father heart was yearning 
to save the children of his Kingdom. 
Being divine is in the last analysis the 
giving of ourselves for the saving of 
the world. "Saving" here means mak- 
ing bad men good, filthy cities clean, 
corrupt politics pure, selfish business 
honest, and unjust social conditions 
righteous. Solemn responsibilities in- 
here in divinity. We must be ourselves 
at our best, we must be heirs of God, 
we must be creators at work with the 
Father, in order to save the world and 
to establish his Kingdom. To whom- 
soever much is given of him shall much 
be required. We must help all man- 
kind to claim its birthright. To be 
potentially divine is to be supremely 
human. 






ADDRESS TO THE CLASS 



And now, members of the gradu- 
ating class, I have said ye are gods and 
all of you are children of the Most 
High. If any one of you doubts this 
staggering assertion I wish you could 
look into your father's and your 
mother's heart. They know that you 
are a child of God. Each of you pos- 
sesses a mystic charm for a parent's 
heart. It was not easy for them that 
day when you took the train to go to 
college for the first time. They were 
willing to give you up because they 
had great expectations for you. They 
sent you here because they wanted you 
to find yourself, to acquire the ability 
to get on independently, to develop a 
sense of responsibility, to deepen your 
appreciation of fine things and to estab- 
lish your world of values and judg- 
ments. 

As the years have come and gone 
they have wondered how college life 
was actually going with you, how you 
were fitting into a new world, and how 



■ • 



20 ON BEING DIVINE 

you were meeting the tests of your fel- 
low students. I can see your busy 
father quickly sort over great piles of 
mail and instinctively pick out the en- 
velope marked "Northampton" — the 
one letter in which he was really inter- 
ested. He probably read it at the 
breakfast table. I can see your mother 
reading your letter again alone, with 
mingled feelings of loneliness and 
gladness but with a deep gratitude, 
also, for you and your maturing life. 
Doubtless they have come to visit you 
and have gone away, I feel sure, not 
knowing whether the difficulty of leav- 
ing you was greater than their deep 
sense of satisfaction at your achieve- 
ments in the development of character 
and the cultivation of personality. 
These four years have put their mark 
on you, but your experience has been 
paralleled in the lives and hearts of 
those who have loved you with an ever- 
lasting love. Perhaps today you appre- 
ciate that love more than you ever have 
before. You understand now, in a 
measure, why they have expected so 
much of you. 

In this beautiful relationship you 



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ON BEING DIVINE 21 

may find the full meaning of the mes- 
sage I have attempted to bring to you 
today. These hopes of your parents are 
a symbol of God's expectations for 
your life. We face today the astound- 
ing, overwhelming, thrilling fact that 
God himself has intense desires for 
each of you as his child. This is the 
glory, the fascination, the solemn 
promise of life. We need not be 
ashamed today if our hearts are full of 
joy and our eyes are full of tears. 
We have sensed the potentialities of 
being divine. It is a moment of su- 
preme worth, — a moment fraught with 
infinite possibilities for all the beautiful 
years to come. My final wish for each 
of you is that you may have the courage 
to live your own life, that you may 
claim your place as a daughter in the 
great family of the Father, that you 
may know the joy and satisfaction of 
working with God, that you may help 
someone who is lost to find the way 
back to the Father's house. In a word, 
and I say it reverently, may you be di- 
vine! "Behold, what manner of love 
the Father hath bestowed upon us, that 
we should be called children of God. 






22 ON BEING DIVINE 

Beloved, now are we the children of 
God, and it is not yet made manifest 
what we shall be." 

May the Lord bless thee and keep thee, 
The Lord make his face to shine upon thee 

and be gracious unto thee, 
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee 

and give thee peace. 



We are children of God, and if children 
then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs 
with Christ. 



t 



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